“So if removing the body didn’t have anything to do with the assailant...” Leigh Ann began.
“It had to do with Mary.” Jennifer shrugged.
“What about fingerprints?” April suggested. She reached across the table and swiped the few remaining chocolate raisins back from Leigh Ann. Apparently she didn’t need an appetite to eat them.
“We know who she is,” Teri pointed out. “They left all of her blood behind.”
April threw Teri a disgusted look. “I meant on her throat or skin. I think I read somewhere that they can actually get prints off a victim’s skin.”
“Tricky at best,” Jennifer assured her. “I hardly think a murderer is going to be thinking about that. Besides, he’d be wearing gloves, don’t you think? And I’m sure he didn’t choke her, not with a knife in his hands. But what if the murderer took the body because he wanted to hide something that could have been discovered during an autopsy?”
“If I were writing this,” Leigh Ann said, letting her legs drop and leaning forward on the table, “I’d put scars on her pelvis to show she’d had children, children no one knew about.”
Teri groaned. “That’s soooo unrealistic.”
But was it? Was there some physical evidence on the body, some scar, some disease, past or present, that the murderer wanted concealed? Mary didn’t marry Shelby until she was at least thirty-one or so. A person could do a lot of living in those years.
“You may be onto something,” Jennifer told her.
Leigh Ann threw her a skeptical look as though she hadn’t expected anyone to believe her, and then warmed to her theory. “I don’t mean she had a gaggle of kids, but what if she had one who came back to find her and murder her for deserting him years before. Twins, maybe. That would give you two suspects working together.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Okay, now you just went over the edge. What I meant was you’re right in that Mary had a life before she met Shelby. And we need to find out what it was.”
“We?” Teri asked. “Is that the royal ‘we’ or are you volunteering our services without asking us first?”
“I was thinking more of the collective we as in I might need you to do a little research for me.”
“I don’t see how what happened to that woman before any of us were born could have any bearing on why she was killed now,” Teri insisted.
“I don’t mean research the past,” Jennifer said.
The doorbell rang, and Muffy ducked out from under Teri’s hand to help Jennifer answer it. It was Monique. She didn’t even bother to say hello, totally ignored Muffy who seemed certain Monique had come just to see her, and thrust a newspaper into Jennifer’s hand.
“Sorry I’m late. I was held up. Have you seen this?”
Jennifer opened the page. It was a copy of the free city paper, folded to Malcolm Reed’s column. Next to his picture on the left was a headline that read “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead.”
“If you think Eileen was the only person who hated Mary, you’d better read this article.”
Chapter 26
Jennifer shut the door and leaned back against it, scanning Malcolm Reed’s article.
“Out loud,” Terry hollered from her spot on the floor. “There aren’t any psychics here.”
“‘Black-hearted Mary Ashton left this earth none too soon during the wee hours of Tuesday morning when she was brutally murdered in her own bed. This once prominent Macon socialite finally received her just deserts—’”
“Can we all say the word ‘slander?’” Leigh Ann threw out.
“Good question. Can you slander the dead?” Teri asked, staring at Monique.
“No, and even if you could, who would sue on Mary’s behalf?” April asked.
Monique collapsed on the sofa, Teri at her feet, having none of the conversation. The last few days had taken their toll. She looked like hell.
“I would if they’d let me keep the settlement,” Teri offered.
“That article’s not all that’s bothering me.” Monique leaned forward.
“Has something happened?” Jennifer asked, tossing the article on the table and following Monique to sit on the sofa arm.
“Mary’s lawyer called Eileen.”
“What for?”
“She’s the executor.”
“The lawyer?” April asked.
“No.” Monique threw them all a work-with-me look. “Mary named Eileen McEvoy executor of her will.”
“You’re kidding.” Jennifer slid off the sofa arm, joining Teri on the floor. “That makes no sense.”
“It gets worse. Mary left her the house and everything in it, all of her worldly possessions. Eileen is Mary’s sole heir.”
“There’s your motive,” April offered. “It’s a heck of a lot stronger than just not liking someone.”
“No lie. We’re talking big bucks,” Teri added.
“Nothing to Arthur?” Jennifer asked.
“Nothing.”
“And to Melba?”
“Not a mention.”
“So what’s she going to do?” Jennifer asked.
“You mean before she goes to prison?” Teri threw in.
“Eileen called Melba immediately and asked her to stay on and continue to take care of the property. And she told her to allow Arthur full use of the kitchen until further notice, although Melba protested that. Eileen doesn’t want to put him out of business even though she can’t keep him on as a salaried employee.”
“This makes no sense to me at all,” Jennifer said. “Did Eileen know?”
“Of course not,” Monique insisted.
“The police will never believe she didn’t.” Jennifer ran her hands through her hair, totally confused. “Mary Ashton told me she suspected Eileen was the one behind those threats. She also told me they’d been going on for some time. Why would she make plans to have someone, namely me, document them and not even bother to change her will?”
“She did change her will, eight months ago, only the change was to make Eileen the beneficiary,” Monique told her.
“About the time of the competency hearing,” Jennifer observed.
“I don’t know why you all seem confused. It makes perfect sense to me,” Leigh Ann announced.
“Of course it would.” Teri threw her a sly look. “So let’s hear this ‘perfect’ sense.”
“If Mary knew Eileen was trying to take the property away from her, if she considered Eileen a threat, making her the beneficiary might have been her way of appeasing her. She might have been saying, ‘Look, I’ll make sure the property stays in the family. You can have it. Just wait until I die.’”
“But if she kept it to herself, and Eileen didn’t know—” April began.
“We only have Eileen’s word that she didn’t know she was the beneficiary,” Jennifer pointed out. “One private phone call would have been all it would take.”
“Eileen’s word is good enough for me.” Monique threw Jennifer a challenging look.
“But whether she knew it or not is actually irrelevant,” Jennifer indicated. “The only thing that matters is that the police, who are already suspicious of Eileen, are going to say she had one heck of a motive for murder.”
“But why not just wait until Mary died?” April asked again.
“Maybe Eileen wanted it settled before her own death,” Teri suggested. “She was older than Mary by several years. Once she died, she had no guarantee that her children would inherit, that Mary wouldn’t change her will again. Maybe she just couldn’t take it one more day. Maybe she simply wanted everything settled once and for all.”
Monique stood and grabbed her purse. “Eileen McEvoy did not kill Mary Ashton. If you all insist on speculating as to how and why she did it, I’ll thank you kindly not to do it in my presence.” She went straight to the door without even a glance at any of them.
“Monique...” Jennifer began.
But Monique already had the door open. She shot a look at Jennifer and then s
hut the door behind her.
Chapter 27
Jennifer leaned over the back of her sofa, worked her fingers up and down Sam’s neck, and whispered in his ear, “What do you know about Malcolm Reed?”
Immediately, she felt his muscles tense back up as his eyes snapped open.
“I knew it!” he said, pulling out of her grip and twisting to look at her.
“What?” she asked, all innocence.
“I know you don’t have an off switch, but can’t you relax for even one evening? What did you do all day? Stew?”
“I tried not to. I made some salads for Dee Dee and froze them.”
“I didn’t think she served anything frozen.”
“Normally she doesn’t, but she has too much work for all of us to get done on time, and I suggested some recipes that do really well. I promised her no one will ever know the difference.”
“Good. Did you get any writing done?”
“A little.”
“And did you keep any of those pages?”
She shook her head. She’d wadded them up and thrown them away.
“Of course you didn’t. You get some fool thought in your mind and you won’t let it go, not even for two minutes. You were thinking about it all through dinner, too, weren’t you?”
“I simply asked you a question.”
“You made me my favorite meal. You bought my favorite wine. You even rubbed my neck. I should have suspected something was up, something other than what I hoped.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break the mood.”
“Jennifer...”
“Okay. I already apologized. Forget I said anything.” She slipped in next to him on the sofa and snuggled up against him, playing with the buttons on his shirt. They sat there for several minutes, neither uttering a sound, their breathing falling into rhythm. He put his arm around her, but then she felt his chest heave. Maybe if he couldn’t forgive her, she could at least help him forget.
She started at his ear and planted little kisses down his jaw. Then she cupped his face in her hands, turned him towards her, closed her eyes, and kissed him as though she hadn’t seen him in a long, long time because in a real way, she hadn’t.
What? Was she crazy? Sam was right. They didn’t get enough time alone together. The heck with Mary Ashton, Juliet, and Malcolm. One night wouldn’t make any difference to any of them, especially as two of them were dead. Suddenly she couldn’t imagine why she had thought it would.
Sam swung her gently around, their lips never losing contact, cradling her in his lap. Finally, when they came up for air, he hugged her to him, tightly, possessively. She could have stayed like that forever, all thoughts of whatever it was she’d been thinking—at the moment she couldn’t quite remember what it was—completely gone from her mind. All she cared about was Sam. Sweet, delicious, incredibly sexy Sam.
He nuzzled her ear, nipping at it. “What’s your interest in Malcolm Reed?”
And he had the nerve to talk about her not letting things go. Curiosity killed a lot more than cats.
She drew back and stared at him. At times, they were way too much alike. “It can wait.”
“Are you kidding? It’s like Reed’s right here between the two of us.”
If he was, she certainly hadn’t noticed.
“Let’s get it out of the way so we can get back to...”
She paused, waiting to see if he would get back to what they’d been doing, but he didn’t. He just sat there, staring down at her. It was her fault. She’d brought it up in the first place. Better to deal with Reed and be done with it.
She bounced up, took the newspaper Monique had brought to her off the table, plopped it in his lap, and then rejoined him. “His girlfriend died almost thirty years ago, and he still hated her stepmother so much he wrote a column comparing her to the Wicked Witch of the East. He used to go with Juliet Ashton.”
Sam leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “Now that I didn’t know. Malcolm has a few, shall we say, unresolved issues.”
“No lie. Anybody who ever read anything he’s written could tell that. So what do you know?”
“He comes from a monied Atlanta family, who, most likely, has nothing to do with him. I understand he lives in a run-down bungalow in the middle of nowhere. Dropped out of college, if what I heard is correct, sometime in the Sixties. You can tell he never trained as a journalist if you read his stuff because he never quite developed an ear for it. He doesn’t follow the rules, not in his life and not in his work.”
“Still a hippie?” she marveled. “They’re getting rare.”
“I don’t know if you could call him that, but he never gave up protesting, although what he protests changes. I suspect he lives on family money. I wouldn’t think that free paper he owns could bring in enough to keep him in the squalor I understand he enjoys.”
“He owns that paper?” She was genuinely surprised.
“How else do you think he could get away with the things he says in it?”
“I attributed it to free speech.”
“Attribute it to self-publication.” Sam shook his head, a grin threatening the corners of his mouth. She hated it when he acted as though she were naive because she wasn’t. She simply had a more optimistic view of life than he did.
“Is he married?”
“Not that I know of. He’s quite a character. All the reporters talk about him. Could be a little envy, I suppose, on some base, subhuman level, for all that freedom. I understand he’s had a succession of live-in lady friends.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He adheres to the love-the-one-you’re-with philosophy.”
“Could he still be carrying a torch for Juliet?” she asked.
“I doubt it. I think he simply has no respect for the legal system. Can’t imagine what a woman would see in him anyway.”
Jennifer always found that interesting: how a man often couldn’t see what a woman found attractive in a man who didn’t fit the accepted image of handsome or successful. But this Reed character sounded like he made it hard to understand for a whole lot of reasons. Men who hadn’t settled down by middle age generally lost their promise as fixer-uppers. By then, the charm was gone. Yet there always seemed to be some woman out there willing to take them on. At least for a while.
“What’s the article say, other than calling Mary Ashton names?” Sam asked.
“That Macon can now rest easy since the house has finally dropped on one of its master manipulators.”
“I see. And was she wearing red-and-white striped stockings when she died? Do you know if Mary had a reputation as a manipulator?”
“If she did, Monique didn’t mention it, although she was certainly strong willed. Mary seemed to keep her sphere of influence fairly close, within the walls of the Ashton Mansion, at least during the last several years.”
“Affecting...”
“Most notably Shelby, who’s dead; Juliet, who’s dead; Melba, presumably alive; and Arthur, definitely alive. And, by association, Malcolm Reed, Eileen McEvoy, and Eileen’s family. But surely Malcolm hasn’t had anything to do with her since Juliet died. Why would he?”
“I wouldn’t give Malcolm’s rantings too much credence. He’s got a lot of anger. Give him any convenient object, system, or person to direct it at and he’s right there.”
“My point exactly. Whoever killed Mary had a lot of anger.”
“Let’s say he did kill her since you seem so intent on exploring a completely unfounded possibility. Why would he wait so long? The woman wasn’t young, and his girlfriend, if that’s where the hatred comes from, died years ago.”
Jennifer sighed and plopped down, deflating.
“She was a manipulator, you know,” Sam said.
Jennifer swiveled her head toward him. “How so?”
“She did a number on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She manipulated you into staying with her. When one tactic didn’t work, na
mely money, she appealed to your conscience. One short conversation with you, and she had you pegged.”
Jennifer nodded. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She’d even known it when it was happening, but people like that are hard to resist.
“She was so good at it,” he went on, “that here you are trying to figure out who killed her.”
“She made me promise.”
“I rest my case.”
“What did you find out at the courthouse?”
“The only address for Mary listed on the marriage license was the Ashton Mansion,” Sam said.
Jennifer perked back up. “Okay. That definitely puts her living in the house before she married Shelby.”
“Right. Free to work her wiles on Shelby and to convince him that she was invaluable in Juliet’s life. From what you’ve told me, Juliet was Shelby’s weakness.”
Jennifer nodded. Now that she’d learned more about Mary, that explanation was far more likely than Shelby simply falling in love with his daughter’s attractive caretaker.
“Did the license list her place of birth?”
“Charleston, South Carolina.”
“I don’t suppose you were able to get a social security number.”
“Yeah, but don’t ask me how I did it.”
She knew exactly how he got it. Charm. It served him well. He also had a way of asking questions that made people think they were correcting or confirming instead of offering new information. And it didn’t hurt that he could read upside down.
“She didn’t apply for a number until she went to work for Ashton,” Sam told her. “In 1959 you didn’t have to have one until you got a legitimate job, not like now when you come out of the womb with one. Shelby wasn’t paying Mary under the table. She actually did have a salary and not a bad one for the time. Once she married him, however, her account went inactive.”
“You mean she didn’t work anymore.”
“Right. And she never tried to draw on it. She hadn’t worked more than two quarters.”
Dying to Be Murdererd Page 12
